Triangle Fat Tire Festival Wrap-Up

For those of you near our home base here in Chapel Hill, NC, we hope you had a chance to stop by the Triangle Fat Tire Festival this past weekend. The weather was fantastic, the crowd for the endurance race was huge, and we had a great time hanging out, racing, and talking to folks about our new mountain bikes and Hans Rey’s fantastic Wheels 4 Life charity.

The field for the endurance race was deep and varied, with a mix of first-time racers, blazing-fast expert riders, and one awesome tandem team (of which we somehow failed to get a picture)! One of our favorite rides for the day was this vintage GT All Terra steed, with period components and shoes.

Of course we also wanted to show off our new 2011 Access mountain bike lineup. As you can see in this shot of just some of the new bikes, we’ve worked hard to expand our exclusive line of mountain bikes. In the coming weeks we’ll share more details about the amazing array of mountain bikes in the Access line (with both 26″ and 29″ wheels), which will expand and build upon the heritage of the Access bikes we currently have on sale right now.

Fuji and Breezer Bikes were also in attendance with redesigned 2011 bikes to show off, so we’ll have some great video previews to share with you soon (sadly the GT demo crew was waylaid by traffic and couldn’t make it to the festival in time).

After the race was over and as the festival was winding down, everyone got down to the serious business of refueling while swapping tales of epic singletrack and the next big ride.

We thought we’d get in on the fun of the after-race awards ceremony, so we gave away a GT Sensor 9r to one lucky festival-goer–the very same bike that our own David and Chris put through its paces in the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race (out in western North Carolina) last month. But we also talked to everyone we could about Hans Rey’s great Wheels 4 Life charity, a non-profit organization that provides bikes for people in developing countries that truly need them. Thanks to the generosity of everyone at the festival, we were able to send $568 straight to Wheels 4 Life on their behalf–enough to provide for 4 bikes that will help change lives for the better.

So thanks to everyone who stopped by our demo tent to talk, or who helped out in our efforts on behalf of Wheels for Life. The Triangle Fat Tire Festival was a great event once again (thanks to the efforts of many volunteers and organizers from our local mountain biking organization) and we at Performance were happy to be out there with our hometown crowd.